FEAGA AWARDS 2017

This year the LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS were given to Rosemarie Schwarzwälder of Galerie Nächst St Stephan in Vienna, and to Massimo Minini of Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia. This year two Lifetime Achievement Awards were given exceptionally and not the Innovation and Creativity Award to a young gallery.

For the 13th time the European Gallery Awards ceremony took place at the opening of Art Basel in the presence of Ernst Hilger, President of the FEAGA Award, Marc Spiegler, Global Director of Art Basel and the F.E.A.G.A. Board.

The European Gallery Award, founded by F.E.A.G.A. (The Federation of European Art Gallery Association*) was created to honour outstanding European galleries, make the work of galleries and their importance for art more visible and valued. The symbolic prize is an object with the words VISIBLE – INVISIBLE.

• This year, in great respect for his being an exemplary gallery of high standing, the Lifetime Achievement Award went to Massimo Minini, Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia. Dott. Luigi Di Corato, Director of the Fondazione Brescia Musei, introduced Massimo Minini.

Massimo Minini opened his gallery in Brescia in 1973. During his early years of activity, he was mainly involved with Conceptual Art, Arte Povera, and Minimal Art. Later he continued along these lines with young Italian and foreign artists. The Gallery has collaborated with a series of museums in Italy and abroad. In 2103 the gallery celebrated 40 years of activity with a publication Massimo Minini Quarantanni 1973-2013 and the exhibition Forty years of Contemporary Art. Massimo Minini 1973-2013 in the Triennale Museum in Milan.

● This year, in great respect for her being an exemplary gallery of high standing, the Lifetime Achievement Award went to Rosemarie Schwarzwälder of Galerie Nächst St Stephan in Vienna. Thomas Trummer, Director of Kunsthaus Bregenz introduced Rosemarie Schwarzwälder.

Since 1978 Rosemarie Schwarzwälder has been representing artists who are partisans of precise, innovative, international abstract and conceptual art at Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna. She laid the foundations for this programmatic direction with the exhibition “Zeichen, Fluten, Signale – neukonstruktiv und parallel” (Signs, Floods, Signals: Neo-Constructivist and Parallel) (1984).

In its ongoing partnership with artists, the Galerie nächst St. Stephan plays an active role in the development of their oeuvres. The potential this creates is the basis of their professional gallery work. The gallery also assists with establishing and expanding private and public collections and their long-term relationships with international collectors and museums are proof of this practice. Published books about the development of art, international comparisons and the validity of aesthetic criteria: Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Klares Programm – Galerie-Arbeit heute, 1995; Kulturen-Verwandtschaften in Geist und Form, 1991; Abstract Painting Between Analysis and Synthesis, 1992, Riss/Lücke/Scharnier A, 2010; Word + Work, 2013.

Quote: Gallery work is not primarily art trade. I have ideas – not movable goods- in my head.